For as long as I can remember, I've been in charge of
making salads in my household. When my family scrambles to put
together a meal, I'm the guy who chops up the vegetables and
mixes the dressing.

I've long maintained that a mixture of one part freshly
squeezed lime juice, two parts olive oil, and a dash of salt and
pepper is a better salad dressing than all the mayonnaise-filled
gunk you'll find in supermarkets in restaurants. By far, the
hardest and most annoying part of that recipe is the lime juice.
At first I depended on
a cheap manual juicer, which was a hassle to use and clean.
Simply squeezing lime halves is another alternative, but it's
hard to get all the juice out unless the lime is perfectly ripe.

Enter an electric juicer. Now, I just take a few
minutes to juice a few limes into a jar on Sundays and it
lasts me the week. It's just incredibly easy to
use, and gets more juice out than I'd be able to without it.

The mechanics are simple: slice the fruit in half, push one of
the halves on top of the juicer, and it'll filter out the pulp
and seeds and pour the juice into a jar or cup. That's it.
If you're one of those weirdos who likes pulp, just put it back
into the juice. The parts are simple and easy to clean, so it
doesn't feel like a hassle at all.

And it works with all citrus fruits. Last week, I was sick. I
juiced some oranges, grapefruits, and Persian sweet lemons. It
tasted like bliss, and it was filled with the Vitamin C I needed.
Tropicana is great, but fresh-squeezed juice tastes much better.

By juicing, you lose some of the nutritional benefits from fruit,
like fiber. But whatever. I'm getting plenty of fiber from all
the salad I'm eating because I have great salad dressing because
I have a juicer.

There are other types of juicers. If I can ever afford one, I'd
like to get
the kind that can squeeze pomegranates. One summer, I
interned at a news agency in Jerusalem. Once a week on my walk to
work I paid ten shekels for an Israeli man at a corner store to
juice three pomegranates in front of my face. It was amazing. It
made POM taste like old candy. I'd get one myself, but they can
cost more than $100.

That's perhaps the biggest benefit of fresh-squeezed juice: it
just tastes better. If you own a juicer, it's incredibly easy to
make. It doesn't always make sense to use in all situations, of
course. In the morning, it's easier for me to grab my Tropicana
grapefruit juice than to pull out the juicer. But when you have
time to use it, you'll be glad you have it.